• As my spell as children's laureate comes to an end, so does 10 years of the institution. It was cooked up by Ted Hughes and Michael Morpurgo, and even if they didn't quite know how it would work out, it has become a way of giving the press and all the various bodies that try to foster an interest in children's books a figurehead to talk to. More than that: Quentin Blake, the first laureate, was so industrious and committed that he ensured none of us who followed after him could get away with merely being a figurehead and no more. Anyone coming to the job since Blake has not only had the designated eight laureate events to plan, but also to think up schemes and projects to help children discover and love reading.

This is all very value-for-money (we get 10 grand from the government) but there is a downside: some of the great children's-book writers and illustrators of our time don't want the job. It's either too time-consuming or there's too much article-writing and TV or radio chatting involved. I'm sure we could all make a list of such people: Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs, Allan Ahlberg, JK Rowling, Philip Pullman. As far as I know, they've all said that if the job were offered to them, they'd decline it.

Hughes and Morpurgo wanted the children's laureateship to have a dual role: as a recognition of a substantial body of work, and as the aforementioned figurehead. The problem is that some people are missing out on that public recognition, of winning the only Oscar the children's book world has, for the quite legitimate reason that they don't want to spend their time writing articles about their favourite books, or having to appear in debates about the school curriculum.

Meanwhile, we wait on the next laureate. I have no idea who it is. Some people think the selection process is apostolic, and that each laureate chooses the next. No: there is a permanent group who manage the laureateship, and they pick an appointment committee - a new one every two years - who have the job of choosing. On 9 June, I have the lovely job of stringing the silver laureate medal round this person's neck, just as Jacqueline Wilson did for me. And no, we don't get any sherry. I couldn't tell if Andrew Motion was joking a few nights ago when he said the poet laureate comes in for scores of bottles of the stuff. Of course, that job has been hamstrung with an obligation to the monarchy and, unlike the children's laureateship, is embedded in the arcane processes of the British non-constitution, with its nod-and-wink method of appointment. I've yet to meet anyone who can tell me openly and honestly how it's done.

I've had a fantastic time, with several highlights: getting an exhibition and conference on the history of children's poetry up and running at the British Library, entitled "Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat!", which is free and on now; producing a book collection by poets from around the country; setting up the Roald Dahl Funny prize, for the funniest children's books of the year; and being on the verge of creating a kind of children's poetry YouTube, the London Grid for Learning.

I've come to the conclusion that the most important thing any of us who care about children's books can do is to be enthusiastic about them. In the present climate, where books are the optional extra in schools too busy "doing literacy" to have time to read, being enthusiastic about books has become slightly subversive.Michael Rosen

• Why are so many books published in the first week of each month, often on the same day? "Easy," says Dan Franklin, who oversees Random House's literary imprints. "You're always hoping for a Waterstone's promotion, and if you get one, it starts at the beginning of the month. So if you go later, you miss out on some of the value of the massive bribe you've paid. And ours are on the same day because we always publish on Thursdays. 'Twas ever thus." Faber's Julian Loose echoes the point about promotions, and adds that "we need reviews to hit while the book is in the shops, so we all end up clustering down one end of the month."

So on Thursday 7 May, Franklin's division will publish fiction by Chatto's AS Byatt, Cape's Adam Foulds and Iain Pears, and no fewer than three Harvill Secker authors. Kazuo Ishiguro and Colm Tóibín have books out from other publishers on the same day, and the preceding week will have seen the publication of novels by Monica Ali, Tash Aw and Hilary Mantel. In non-fiction, titles appearing in the first week of May (plus 30 April) include David Aaronovitch on conspiracy theories, Gillian Tett on the banking meltdown, Tristram Hunt on Engels, Richard Overy on interwar Britain and Andy Beckett on the 1970s.

Despite often sharing a publisher, these books will vie for display space in bookshops, media coverage and high-profile readings. Some authors are already emerging as winners - Byatt's The Children's Book is Waterstone's book of the month for May; Tett and Hunt were on this week's Start the Week on Radio 4, with Aaronovitch and Ali booked for Monday - but most will be losers, and might well have received much more attention had a publication date been chosen in the second half of the month, when hardly any big books come out.

"What you're describing is a car accident!" cries Franklin when read the full list. He compares it to 2 October, the trade's so-called Super Thursday last year, "when there was a pile-up of all the celebrity memoirs". At least at that time the clashing titles were confined to one genre: this time, Stupid Thursday seems apter.

Do authors ever complain about being forced into these unseemly, sales-slashing head to heads? "Never," Franklin says. "Although I dare say some will when your piece appears."John Dugdale

• More than 100 million people have watched her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" on YouTube, so it isn't all that surprising that the book world wants a piece of Susan Boyle. Three weeks after the previously unknown Scottish singer appeared on Britain's Got Talent, she's already got a literary agent: Mark Lucas, who counts Andy McNab and Labyrinth author Kate Mosse among his clients, and who is auctioning Boyle's memoir to a host of interested publishers. Money being offered for the autobiography - likely to be called, you guessed it, I Dreamed a Dream - is said to have topped £100,000, and is expected to continue to climb.

But one UK publisher has doubts: "I feel that if the book was able to come out on print on demand at the end of May it would do extremely well, but come September ..." Alison Flood

• Acclaimed science fiction authors Ursula K Le Guin and Ian R MacCleod were both rewarded with prestigious prizes this week, with Le Guin picking up her sixth Nebula award for her young-adult novel Powers, and MacCleod winning British SF's most distinguished prize, the Arthur C Clarke award. MacCleod's near-future set Song of Time, in which an old woman looks back over her days on Earth as she prepares to enter a virtual afterlife, beat shortlisted authors including Alastair Reynolds and Neal Stephenson in a "very close" contest to take the Arthur C Clarke. Paul Billinger, chair of the judges, said: "Infused throughout with the love of music, Song of Time contains some of the most evocative writing on the subject for many years."

Powers, the third in Le Guin's Annals of the Western Shore series, meanwhile, saw off strong competition from Terry Pratchett and Cory Doctorow to win the best novel prize at the Nebulas, one of the most important American science fiction awards.AF